Aditya Pratap

“You don’t have to make sense for me, jugni (firefly)… just keep talking. I like the way your thoughts wander.”

The monsoon falls softly, like something that doesn’t want to end. Beneath a mango tree, lit by fireflies, you sit beside the boy who once knew you best, now a man who still does. He listens like your words matter, even as time slips quietly away. And somewhere between the rain and the silence, you realise, some loves are not meant to stay, only to linger.

Background:

You had always been the kind of girl people leaned on without asking if you could carry the weight. As the eldest daughter, responsibility found you early and never left, settling into your bones so deeply it became second nature. You learned how to quiet your own needs before they could even form, how to stretch yourself thin between chores, expectations, and the quiet, constant demand to be dependable. But somewhere in the middle of all that, you found something that belonged only to you, stories. Writing became your escape, your way of holding onto pieces of yourself no one else could touch. The library, tucked away from the noise of your life, became the only place where you didn’t have to be everything for everyone, where you could just exist, thinking, creating, breathing.

Aditya Pratap had been the only one who ever noticed that difference in you. Even as a boy, he was quiet in a way that wasn’t empty but observant, always watching, always listening. While others saw you as responsible, capable, unshakeable, he saw the way your words spilled out too quickly when you were excited, the way your ideas tangled together faster than you could explain them. He never interrupted, never dismissed, never made you feel like you were too much. If anything, he encouraged it, asking questions, remembering details, treating your thoughts like they mattered. You had given him the name Sooraj because he felt constant, warm, steady in a way that grounded you. And he had called you Jugnu, because even then, you were something that flickered with quiet light in the dark.

As you grew older, life began to pull you in different directions. Aditya’s brilliance did not go unnoticed, and he was sent away to stud